When students first enter high school as freshmen, they have the opportunity to attend the club fair to see several of the clubs offered and sign up for any that seem interesting to them.

Looking back at the club fair, my freshman year, at almost every stand I went to, one of the main selling points for each club was that it would look great on a college application.

This always worked on me as a freshman, and I signed up for many of the clubs I saw despite not wanting to join. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was being a résumé builder.

Résumé building is when a student gets involved in an activity, whether it’s a sport, extracurricular, competition or volunteer work, solely for the purpose of being able to put it on a college application. Essentially, it’s basing your involvement off of what would impress a college admissions officer, rather than what you would actually enjoy.

While I can’t speak for everybody, I can say for myself that I never had fun in the clubs I signed up for because I wasn’t passionate about them. However, I stayed in them for the entire year because I was promised that it would pay off when I was applying to college.

There is a toxic idea shared by several high school students stressing the importance of college applications and how the only way to get into a good college is by only taking honors and AP classes, being the president of every club, having thousands of volunteer hours and winning national awards.

While it’s admirable to have aspirations, many résumé builders are sacrificing their enjoyment of high school with the aim of getting into a top college.

So why should we care?

Doesn’t résumé building only affect one person? Well, not necessarily.

There are possibilities that a résumé builder could, not only join an extracurricular that they don’t want to be in but also take a spot in that extracurricular from someone who does want to be in it.

There are several teams and activities, both in and outside of school, that have a limited amount of spots available, meaning that some people have to be cut.

There are also a limited number of leadership positions at school. There will be times where someone who is passionate about an activity will lose a position to someone who just wants to claim to have been a club officer or a member of an exclusive team.

Students need to realize there is more to high school than just worrying about an application. High school provides students with the opportunity to discover what interests them, get involved and become friends with peers who share similar interests. Clubs should be a place to have fun and do what you love, not to pad up a college application. It’s important to view getting involved from the perspective of what you truly enjoy, rather than the toxic lens of a résumé.